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Player Handbook

Everything you need to play: the Roll, building a character, the Trees, combat, equipment and progression.

Equipment

A creature wears eight pieces at a time, one per slot. Until a piece is worn it does nothing: nothing applies from inside a bag.

Skills granted by an equipped piece do not count against your MemoryRule wordMemoryThe number of Skills you can have Memorised at the same time. and do not have to be learnt. The piece grants them while it is worn, and takes them back when you remove it.

The eight slots

Head
Helm, hood, crown. What protects or marks the face.
Armour
The piece that carries your Armour Class formula. One at a time.
Boots
Shoes and greaves: what touches the ground and what sets your Speed.
Necklace
Torc, amulet, pendant. Worn against the skin, under the armour.
Left hand
A weapon, a shield, or nothing. A two-handed weapon takes both.
Right hand
As the left. Two Light weapons, one in each hand, open an attack as a Bonus ActionRule wordBonus ActionA quick action taken during your turn. You have one per turn. Usually reserved for Skills that say so..
Jewel (x2)
Two independent slots. Ring, set stone, carved talisman.

Every catalogue entry prints what concerns it: its headline value, its stats, its named properties, its recipe and what it grants. Those numbers belong to the piece and are not repeated anywhere else.

The GM announces what you begin equipped with. With no armour your ACRule wordACArmour Class, the total an Attack has to reach to hit you. is 12 + Dexterity, and an unarmed Strike deals 1d4 + Strength: a character with nothing is not a defenceless one.

Finding materials

Equipment is obtained by crafting far more than by buying. What you can wear therefore depends on the materials you bring back.

After a significant encounter, or the discovery of a workable source, each character receives one Loot Opportunity. Spend it one of two ways.

Random loot
RollRule wordRoll2d12 + one Characteristic + one Aptitude, measured against a DC, an AC or an Opposed Roll. the source’s Loot Die. The GM reads its Loot Table and announces what you get. No further Roll.
Targeted harvest
Say what you are after and how you recover it. The GM sets the Roll and its DCRule wordDCThe difficulty a Roll has to reach, set by the GM or by a rule.. On a failure the Opportunity is spent for nothing.

The first is safe and asks nothing of you. The second aims precisely and may yield nothing. A target the fiction does not allow you to extract is not obtained on a Roll.

Reading a material

A material carries a name, one or more Types, and a Material Value. So: Wolf hide (Types: Leather, Beast; Value: 1).

Within a single piece of crafting, a material counts towards only one of its Types, even if it carries several the recipe accepts.

Crafting

An entry’s box names its discipline, its cost, the Types it accepts and its Rolls in order.

  1. Gather materials covering each of the Types asked for.
  2. Meet or exceed the cost, across all materials together. How it is spread between the Types is free: one ingot and ten hides do as well as an even split.
  3. Commit the materials, then make the Rolls in order.

Every Roll has to succeed. The materials are consumed from the start: if a Roll fails, the crafting stops and they are lost.

That is the real cost of an expensive piece. It is not its price, it is the risk of committing everything to a run of Rolls.

The four disciplines

The colour of the box repeats the discipline the piece is worked under, and its title names it: CraftAptitudeCraftKnowing metal, leather and wood and how to work them. Can also be used to make weapons, armour and equipment. at the forge, ArcanaAptitudeArcanaKnowing magic, its Spells, its runes and its objects. Can also be used to carry out arcane crafting. at the arcane bench, TechnologyAptitudeTechnologyKnowing mechanisms, locks and traps. Can also be used to make bombs, grenades and other devices. at the workshop, ScienceAptitudeScienceKnowing substances and how they react. Can also be used to prepare potions, philtres and mixtures. at the laboratory.

Each is an AptitudeRule wordAptitudeA field of know-how. It makes up half of every Roll., and that is what you roll. Raising Craft with MP is raising your ability to forge.

With no recipe

Propose the object or the modification to the GM. They start from the nearest existing piece, set the Types, the cost and the Rolls, and the procedure is unchanged. An approved creation can become a permanent recipe for the campaign.

Equipment sets

Some pieces carry a set sigil. Gather enough of them on one character and the set activates, in tiers.

A tier counts the pieces of the set you are wearing, not the ones you own. Two pieces at the bottom of a bag open nothing.

Each tier adds to the ones below it. Wearing four pieces of a set with a two-piece tier and a four-piece tier gives you both effects, not only the last. Remove a piece and you drop back below the tier, at once.

A tier always starts at two pieces. Whatever a single piece grants is a property of that piece, not a set.

A Skill granted by a tier takes up no Memory and does not have to be learnt, exactly like one granted by a piece. That is what makes a set attractive to a character whose Memory is already full.

The pieces of a set do not all occupy the same slot, and nothing obliges you to complete it. Two pieces taken for their first tier, with six slots free for something else, is an ordinary choice.

Money

Crafting remains the main road to equipment. Money covers what it does not: buying what you cannot make, selling what you will not keep, paying for what is not an object.

A price is a benchmark for the GM, not a tariff to be held to.

Bronze coin
The smallest. Bread, a candle, a night in a common room.
Silver coin
Worth 100 bronze. The currency of everyday equipment.
Gold coin
Worth 100 silver. The currency of anything out of the ordinary.

A price is written from the largest coin down, and a coin at zero is not written. Three hundred bronze reads 3 silver. A gold coin and twenty bronze reads 1 gold 20 bronze.

Where a price comes from

An object’s price derives from the material it takes and its rarity:

price in silver = Material Value × rarity multiplier

The multiplier is 1 for a Common object and 4 for an Uncommon one. Above that an object has no price: it is obtained by crafting, by loot or through the fiction, never over a counter.

You do not have to do this sum. Every catalogue entry prints its price; the formula only says where it came from, and why two objects of the same material do not cost the same.

Buying and selling

The GM says what a place stocks. A village counter does not hold what a stronghold holds.

You say what you are after, the GM says whether the place has it and at what price, then you pay or you haggle.

An object sold back fetches half its price. A material sold back fetches its Material Value in silver. A merchant’s Skills change those prices, and they say by how much.

What money will not buy

XP, MP and PP. No sum raises a CharacteristicRule wordCharacteristicOne of a character's six core scores. It makes up half of every Roll., an Aptitude, a resource or a Skill.

Nor will it buy a recipe your character cannot read, or a material no source in the region produces.

The GM announces your starting purse with the rest of the starting set. Twenty silver or so buys a common weapon and a potion, which is enough to play the first session.